While Nigerians queue for fuel, ration electricity and watch inflation hollow out their wages, President Bola Tinubu is busy lighting cigars with taxpayer money in Washington. The federal government finally found money. Not for hospitals, not for power grids, not for security reform; but for US lobbyists. The
President’s decision to spend $750,000 a month on a Washington influence campaign is a revealing moment for Africa’s largest democracy. It speaks not only to Abuja’s growing anxiety over foreign perceptions, but also to a troubling habit of outsourcing legitimacy rather than earning it. This is not strategy. It is image and reputational laundering.
At $750,000 a month, Abuja’s latest lobbying binge is not diplomacy. It is extravagance dressed up as national security. It is panic management outsourced to American political mercenaries. And it is a damning indictment of a government that would rather purchase influence abroad than fix credibility at home. The official justification is national security. Separatist groups linked to Biafra have successfully courted America’s evangelical right and conservative lawmakers, culminating in an extraordinary outburst by Donald Trump last November, when he threatened military intervention over alleged Christian persecution. Alarmed, Tinubu’s administration rushed to hire one of Washington’s most well-connected Republican lobbying firms to “reframe the narrative”.
Granted, that narrative does need correcting. Claims of a state-backed genocide are exaggerated and often misleading. Yet the government’s chosen response exposes deeper weaknesses. If Nigeria’s international reputation can be damaged so quickly by relatively small activist networks, it is not because Abuja lacks lobbyists. It is because it lacks credibility. Influence campaigns work best when they amplify reality, not when they attempt to substitute for it. Nigeria’s insecurity is real. Religious tensions are real. Police abuses are real. Judicial paralysis is real. These are not problems that can be neutralized by press briefings on Capitol Hill. Instead of addressing insecurity, religious tensions, or governance failures that give separatist narratives oxygen, Tinubu has chosen the laziest solution available to weak administrations everywhere: throw money at foreign lobbyists and hope perception outpaces reality.
The administration claims it is fighting an “information war.” But wars of information are not won by cheques alone. They are won by reform, competence and legitimacy. No amount of Washington spin can erase mass kidnappings, collapsing infrastructure, or a justice system Nigerians no longer trust. You cannot DCI-Group your way out of dysfunction. Worse still, the obscenity of the spending is staggering. Three-quarters of a million dollars every month, in a country where teaching hospitals beg for bandages, universities shut down over unpaid salaries, and flood victims sleep under tarpaulins. This is not just waste. It is moral vandalism.
Even more embarrassing is the imbalance. A Biafra separatist group spends $66,000 a month and still outmaneuvers the giant of Africa on Capitol Hill. That is not evidence of their brilliance. It is proof of Abuja’s diplomatic incompetence. That a separatist group spending a fraction of the government’s budget has managed to shape US congressional conversations more effectively is not a triumph of activism; it is an indictment of Nigerian diplomacy. Abuja’s foreign policy apparatus appears reactive, fragmented and overly dependent on personal networks rather than institutional strength. Nigeria should not be losing narrative control to boutique lobby shops and WhatsApp propaganda networks. Yet here we are; reduced to paying political middlemen to explain our own country to foreigners.
Tinubu’s team argues that the stakes justify the expense: arms deals, sanctions risk and defense cooperation hang in the balance. That may be true. But the optics are catastrophic. It sends a clear message: Tinubu’s priority is managing Washington’s mood, not Nigerians’ misery. Weapons contracts secured through lobbying will not stabilize Nigeria if the underlying governance crisis remains unresolved. Helicopters cannot compensate for eroding public trust. And the timing could not be more grotesque. Nigeria is asking its citizens to endure subsidy removals, tax hikes and a brutal cost-of-living squeeze. The government is pushing painful “reforms” on citizens while quietly wiring millions abroad for image repair. Nigerians are told to tighten belts. Abuja is loosening purse strings. This is governance upside down.
The larger danger is precedent. By turning Washington into a battleground for domestic legitimacy, Nigeria risks encouraging every internal dispute to be internationalized. Politics becomes a bidding war for foreign sympathy rather than a contest of domestic reform. If the Tinubu administration truly wanted to neutralize separatist propaganda, it would start by neutralizing the conditions that fuel it: insecurity in the southeast, police abuses, political exclusion, judicial delays, and economic despair. Instead, it is exporting the problem, and paying a premium to do so. Lobbying is not leadership. Public relations is not policy. And foreign approval is not legitimacy.
History will not be kind to a government that chose Washington optics over domestic responsibility. When the invoices are paid and the contracts expire, Nigeria will still face the same fractures; only poorer, more cynical, and more disillusioned. Tinubu promised renewed hope. What Nigerians are getting instead is renewed spending; just not on them. Tinubu came to office promising economic discipline and national renewal. A lobbying spree does not fit that promise. It suggests a presidency more comfortable managing optics abroad than tackling dysfunction at home. Buying friends in Washington may deliver short-term relief. It will not deliver long-term stability. For that, Nigeria needs something far less glamorous; and far more difficult: effective government.
